Sandy lesson: Don't mess with Jersey

New York will always be bigger. Connecticut’s richer. But if there’s one lesson from the Hurricane Sandy debate, it’s Don’t Mess With Jersey.

A chippy Chris Christie set the tone early when the New Jersey governor warned fellow Republicans on Monday that they’d picked “the wrong state” to begin changing the rules for disaster aid. By Tuesday on the House floor, it was the Garden State in full bloom: “Sopranos”-style muscle, Princeton science, below-the-belt jabs, even old family debts dating to 19th-century Indian wars and Andrew Jackson.

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Bipartisan outrage towards Boehner

Christie blasts Congress, GOP

“Yes, I’m angry,” shouted the typically low-key Rep. Frank LoBiondo (R-N.J), who invited his out-of-state Republican opponents to join the “hypocrisy caucus.” “Florida, good luck with no more hurricanes. California, congratulations. Did you get rid of the San Andreas Fault? The Mississippi is in a drought. Do you think you’re not going to have a flood again? Who are you going to come to when you have these things?”

By nightfall, the end product was a bipartisan coalition that held firm — not just on the big votes to pass the $50 billion-plus aid package but on many of the smaller ones, as well.

A Republican amendment to cut $1 million for the Legal Services Corp. was defeated 217 to 202. A second proposal to strike $13 million for the National Weather Service failed by a vote of 214 to 206.

Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-N.J.), the floor manager and Christie’s congressman, took the lead on the first: “I know people have a hate-on for the Legal Services Corp. of America,” he said bluntly. “But at a time when people are in such desperate straits and misery, to deny the poorest of the poor recourse when fat people can be taking advantage of them, … I am opposed.”

On the weather service amendment — which would affect science — Frelinghuysen left the dissection to Rep. Rush Holt (D-N.J.), former assistant director of the Princeton Plasma Physics Lab. “This amendment is of outsize importance in its misguided intent,” Holt said drily. “It’s completely nonsensical.”

After seven hours, the Republican House — whose speaker, John Boehner (R-Ohio), blocked all Sandy action just weeks ago — cut just under $160 million, a difference of about .33 percent.

“I don’t know any figure in the Republican Party who could have had the impact he did,” Rep. Rob Andrews (D-N.J.) said of Christie’s role in the turnaround since New Year’s Day. Seeing the handwriting on the wall Tuesday night, Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.), a Christie pal, climbed aboard for final passage.

Yet the politics were stark, and the debate, brutal and poignant at once.

Not missing a beat — nor the jugular — Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-N.J.) went right at the fact that one of the leading opponents, Rep. Mick Mulvaney (R-S.C.), benefited from a small-business loan after flooding in his state.